Her metabolism had worked to expunge the remaining sedative Arty had used. She nodded and sat up stiffly, rubbing hot, scratchy eyes. She’d draped herself awkwardly across Tala in her drug-numbed state and now had a new set of muscular kinks to add to an elongating list of aches and pains.
They hardly seemed to matter anymore. She’d grown so weary and so hurt Katja started to feel a disconnect from her corporeal self, as if her broken body was merely a tool for the mind she was gradually receding into. A large, remotely operated means of conveyance that had grown old too fast, poorly maintained and starting to show the inevitable signs of dereliction.
“You want to talk about it?” Tala asked, placing a gentle hand on her knee. Her features were hard but expressive, a strong jaw sat beneath unfeminine brows and angular cheekbones and the stark Grace flattop gave her a mannish severity. While Tala bore so many of her own injuries, she seemed to channel Katja’s pain and fear as if hoping she could somehow absorb them and unburden her. Katja could see in Tala’s soft, almond shaped brown eyes the depth of her need to make Katja better, that was why she’d tried to drive her away, Tala would hurt herself to save Katja.
Katja shook her head. “Not really.”
They were still in the cell. Bright antiseptic strip lights fuzzed in the corridor beyond, shedding retina tiring neon white through the bars. The cell measured three meters square, a single steel shelf, bolted to the bulkhead and furnished with a thin, stained mattress, constituted a bed and beside it a stainless steel toilet without a seat provided the only adornments.
Katja had an urgent needed to piss, but couldn’t summon the exhibitionism required to urinate in the presence of men.
Captain Tor, the wild eyed, blond haired man who she’d escaped from after the morgue, slumped catatonic against the opposite bulkhead. He’d abandoned Tala to her fate when the EVA suit she was using malfunctioned. She would have died returning to her ship and he’d been given little choice. Tala’s anger at abandonment had softened, but what remained Katja felt was misplaced. His decision had brought them together.
The Captain had become deeply broken since Katja lay pinned by hoards of infected, pressing down upon her, in the service corridor. He’d stopped mumbling and his intense, unflinching eyes fixed on some unseen image or event that demanded the concentration of his entire being. Were it not for the occasional movement of his eyelids and the near imperceptible rise and fall of his chest, he could be assumed dead. Katja imagined if she started to openly piss in the middle of the cell it would not distract his attention.
Beside him, an innocuous looking Latino man with teak brown skin called Diego stared at Katja with thinly veiled resentment. The essence of stale urine still drifted from the helmet coupling of his EVA suit, his catheter having apparently detached or been incorrectly fitted. At first Diego had worn a mien of shame and shock faced resignation in the cell. But slowly, she’d sensed a teenagers envy subtly twisting his face as fear gave way to nervous boredom. He was in love with Tala, of that Katja was certain and even when faced with impending death, the snubbing hurt.
Perhaps impending death made the unrequited feelings rawer.
They’d not talked as a group since Katja was brought to the cell. It was like pouring salt on a fresh sore but Katja had managed to recount everything Arty told her, before setting upon her. Before she’d killed him.
Katja informed them about the party arriving at the station, about their status as unwanted observers, then the memories of the interrogation room spinning caused her lucidity to flee. Katja couldn’t remember if anyone said anything in response before she fell asleep. She didn’t think so and she had no point of reference as to how long she’d slept, how long until they expected the party to arrive and eliminate the witnesses. Eliminate them.
“I’ve been having them too,” Tala said absentmindedly, picking up the closed thread of discussion without any real interest in it. Her eyes scouring the bulkheads and deckheads for modes of escape, just as she’d done in District Four, in Gennady’s room, before Kirill’s coup. “Bad dreams…”
They’d been safest running. Every time they’d stopped they found themselves under threat, either by the mindless infected or the unspooling human populace. But now they were trapped, imprisoned and where was left to go? They hadn’t eaten since the uprising in District Four and the only thing Katja had drunk since then was poisoned. Even if they could get out of the cells, the station would be abandoned, either to the infected or scuttled altogether. The cleanup party would surely disable Tala’s ship. Surely leave them trapped as the station tumbled apart into the ether. The final human tenants of Murmansk-13.
Katja tried to staunch her train of thought as hope vented from her system like atmosphere from a compromised fuselage. The strength to fight ebbed away as a steady thread of panic threatened to override her sedative free system. Tala squeezed Katja faintly into her body, sensing the febrile saturation of hopelessness wracking her body. Reawakened nerve endings converted the touch to a calming salve. “We’re not dead yet,” whispered Tala.
The undying neon lights stripped time of any context. Katja blinked raw eyes against the light and realised she’d been placed on the steel cot, staring up at the seamless deckhead. She’d fallen asleep again, a mercifully dreamless sleep providing a darkened cocoon for a mind no longer capable of processing the tedious and terrorizing wait for death.
Beyond her field of sight she sensed activity. Katja turned on the formless mattress to see Tala and Diego cautiously hovering near the bars like animals in a zoo, watching the hydraulic cellblock doors. Katja braced herself against the harbingers of doom, tried to make herself as small as possible in the tiny exposed cell. She heard the hydraulic hiss of the doors and squeezed her eyes closed.
She wished she’d remained asleep, perhaps that had been Tala’s hope.
“Hernandez?” Tala and Diego spoke the name in union – an incredulous question. Katja peered through clenched eyelids, daring to hope for a stay of execution.
“Hola pendejo,” said a short man with a small head in an EVA suit, green palm emblem on the sleeves. Dr. Smith walked at close distance behind him with her gun pointed at the back of his skull. It didn’t appear to affect his mood as he waved cheerily to his co-captives. Hernandez shared a similar skin tone to Diego, but his face bore a distinctly indigenous quality partially concealed by a lock of dark greasers hair. “Hola mi chica, it’s good to see you. Hoy, what happened to your face?” He spoke quickly, with a soft, nasally voice. His question addressed Tala.
Something about the coquettish way Tala masked her damaged features with her hand, turning from the man’s gaze, irked Katja. She watched the tough Filipinas light brown skin darken under his scrutiny. It was an act so incomprehensible and uncharacteristic of the Tala she knew that her stomach fluttered beneath a rush of hopeless inadequacy.
As Tala shyly hid the injuries she’d gained, usually in protecting Katja and now oblivious to her, Katja recalled her words ‘You don’t know me.’ Her actions now lent credence to those words. Katja snapped her eyes shut and turned away, either pretending to sleep or as an act of petulance, it didn’t really matter, nobody was paying her attention anyway.
With her eyes closed, Katja allowed her mind to unravel. In truth she was confused, awaiting death and trying to control a gnawing jealousy that served no purpose. She’d almost told Tala she loved her, but that was absurd. What was Tala to her? An exotic bodyguard? Perhaps it would be best to view her in such simple light, try and banish the depth of feeling that had blossomed amongst danger and decay.